Nasa photography showcases our beautiful planet

The images, including this of Central Europe to the Middle East Nasa has released a compilation of the best of its time-lapse photography from space - accompanied by a suitable theme tune. To the haunting sounds of Walking In The Air, written by Howard Blake for the film The Snowman, the four-minute tape zooms over the earth's surface from the International Space Station, shot by the Expedition 30 crew who boarded in November.
The breathtaking footage captured enchanting light displays and vivid weather systems across the globe in the last five months.
Among the extraordinary images was the Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean, Comet Lovejoy streaking across the sky and storms over Africa.
Using a special low-light camera the group aboard the station captured the images at a height of 240 miles.
The International Space Station is home to astronauts from 15 countries and has operated 24-hours a day for the past decade.
Along with transmitting breathtaking imagery back to earth, the ISS conducts scientific research, answering the many unknowns about our universe.
The station's purpose is to be a laboratory and observatory while acting as a staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars and asteroids.
Time-lapse photography is a technique whereby the frequency at which the frames are captured is much lower than that at which they are played back.
When the images are played back at high speed, they give the sensation that the image is moving.
The pictures that we see from space are likely to improve in quality in the future after one astronaut  invented a specialised camera that solved the problem of taking pictures on board the craft which moves at more than four miles a second.
Andre Kuipers recently installed 'Nightpod' - a motorised camera that compensates for the hurtling speeds of the ISS, by tracking points on Earth's surface. The results are some of the most spectacular pictures ever taken from space.
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are regularly treated to a spectacular view of cities on Earth lit up at night - but the relative speed of the space station meant any pictures taken at night were blurred.
In late 2002 and early 2003, however, astronaut Don Pettit, part of Expedition 6, constructed a device called a barn-door tracker using spare parts from around the space station.
Just as they like taking pictures looking down on us from above, photographing the ISS has become a popular pastime.
Last year French astrophotographer Thierry Legault went to Oman to photograph the sun, moon and space station lined up.
Legault, who received the Marius Jacquemetton award from the Société astronomique de France in 1999, use websites that predicted when the ISS will pass in front of the Sun or Moon and what location those passes will be visible from.
Smart phone apps and certain websites use longitude and latitude data to show space enthusiasts when the ISS will be visible - if the weather conditions are agreeable. The station can been seen across the entire world except from in the extreme north and south.